Economy of the body

The Druid was a large vessel. Its crew included chief mates, second mates, and third mates, sea carpenters, sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths, harpooners, ship keepers, and gun keepers. Two weeks after casting off her cables a 23 year old boatswain named M. Othon was court marshaled for conspiracy to mutiny. Barnum Wallabout, the ship’s commander, toyed with the idea of a trial-at-sea. If the trial commenced Charles Rattlebox, the commanding officer during the courts martial would stand to be promoted to Chief Magistrate of the Admiralty where he would preside over the trial in a judge’s capacity.

It was Rattlebox’s opinion that Captain Wallabout should conduct the trial aboard the ship. He explained to Wallabout that if this case reached the Royal Navy, the captain, who was on probation for a dark record of executions from previous voyages, would surely be discharged. Wallabout was first skeptical of Rattlebox, but he was on thin-ice with the Lord Admiral of the Imperial Relations Trust and the threat of discharge was, he had to admit, an actuality. Rattlebox further pointed out that the crew of the Druid, being largely pressed into service, might, if Wallabout executed M. Othon without due process, be made mutinous if they hadn’t been already. This event must be handled delicately, Rattlebox said. And I’m the man to handle it.

After Rattlebox explained this to Wallabout the captain dismissed him and called for a private meeting, in the forecastle, with his Chief Navigator, Commodore, Vice-Admiral, Deacon of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Heathen and his clerk to serve tea and take notes. Upon conclusion of this meeting he asked for a minute alone. Some hours later the captain located Rattlebox in his stateroom reclining on a settee, his hands behind his head, above him a skylight. Beneath the skylight stood an old sea chest that did double duty as a washstand and a center table. The chest bore several pages of M. Othon’s affidavit, the ink still wet, spread out to dry.

Standing nearby were three chief officers and M.Othon in shackles. By reflex the officers saluted the captain as he entered the cabin, an ordinary enough occurrence. However, Wallabout noticed with a shudder, the prisoner also moved to salute him but, like a dog bounding after a raccoon oblivious to its leash, the prisoner’s right arm reached the end of the chain’s slack and was snapped back. The officers spoke briefly to the captain before he dismissed them, along with the prisoner, and settled on a sofa opposite Rattlebox. He helped himself to Rattlebox’s brandy. He swallowed by snapping his head back.

The skylight of Rattlebox’s stateroom at certain times of day became like the mouth of a cave: intense illumination in the area directly below the mouth of the portal, a swiftly intensifying darkness moving toward the perimeter. Thus positioned beneath the skylight, captain Wallabout’s face was cast into sharp relief; he was not unusually fat or aged but was afflicted with jowly cheeks and a neck that hung loose like turkey waddle. His eyebrows were bushy and grey with rogue strands that arched over his eyelids making him blink. He chose not to wear a wig, considering them “superfluous” instead oiling and slicking back his thinning white hair. Likewise, his face was always clean shaven which made him look like a Sharpe (a 23 year old Napoleon described Wallabout as “an unremarkable man whose only distinction being that he possesses a face like a deflated breast.”)

A trial at sea, the captain said, while a great inconvenience to our mission increasingly seems like the most expeditious decision. I’ve spent the morning with Penrod and Coldstream among others. It may be possible, if their calculations of the transit of Venus are correct, that we can postpone our adventures in Africa by a fortnight. Our location is far enough removed from the paths of other vessels. The weather is seasonable. But most importantly, he added, this trial must be private; it will not be a spectacle, a thing of entertainment; I will not have my authority undermined. Wallabout laid out his conditions for how the trial should proceed. Rattlebox remained silent, careful not to interrupt his commander. When he was done Wallabout stood up and shook the Judge’s hand. With time, Rattlebox said pleased that the captain had come to his senses, the philosophical dimensions of this case will come to fascinate you, much like they have me and by all accounts already have the rest of the crew. I’m grateful to have your council, Wallabout said. That evening Rattlebox received his promotion like a gentleman and pledged on the Bible, in a genteel ritual on the bridge involving the passing of a ceremonial sword, to assume the responsibility of bringing to justice the seditious activities of M. Othon (who had pleaded not guilty).

To Ezekiel Grand, the shipboard surgeon, Rattlebox was just another in a revolving door of gentlemen officer-sailors made irrelevant, in a medical sense, by their moderately good health. Yet during the first days of the trial The Judge distinguished himself to the doctor by his sober appraisal of the mutiny and his forbearance during the process. Grand came to admire Rattlebox as an outstanding example of a particular type of sea officer of that time: deeply religious, extremely capable, and a most effective diplomat. Grand invested great import onto surfaces: thus it were the laugh lines round the fleshy edges of Judge Rattlebox’s eyes that represented to Grand a kind of precocious (only 29 summers had Rattlebox seen) and advanced wisdom and humor that the doctor found charming. And after becoming acquainted with Rattlebox, Grand’s anxiety about the fairness of the trial was pacified. Under this kind man’s auspices, Grand thought to himself, M. Othon will surely receive the chance to defend himself with the full rights and privileges afforded by Enlightenment jurisprudence.

Grand washed the judge’s arm with heated water from a metal basin before drying the area with a calico cloth. He sprinkled sugar on the dried area. With two hands Grand gently lifted from the back of his medical cabinet the time-darkened rainwater filled Mason jar. He presented it to The Judge who lay on his back. Rattlebox’s face lit up. There she is. There’s my girl, he said gazing lovingly into the jar as if he were looking through glass into a maternity ward’s nursery. You are single-handedly keeping her alive, said Grand. And vice versa doctor, said Rattlebox. The reptile was ravenous, having been subjected to weeks of forced fasting. It affixed its face against the glass in anticipation. Grand reached into the jar with tongs.

Weighed against the profound tribulations that tested men in the New Testament, Grand thought, the trial of M. Othon, at two weeks and counting has so far been a brief affair. For this we must be thankful. Yet here is my new friend Judge Rattlebox, who during this short period of time, has taken on, admirably, the responsibility of not only Judge but also Jury and Executioner. And the effects of this selfless devotion to justice show most clearly in his face, which has the gaunt appearance of a prisoner of war.

Grand’s examining chamber was a lieutenant’s stateroom converted to a sickbay by the addition of half a dozen berths and a claw-footed medical cabinet. The cabinet was protected by beveled glass, lined with cork and purple velvet and contained everything a shipboard barber surgeon might need: on the top shelf were herbs, potions, emetics, antiseptics, soporifics and jars with tufts of cotton. On the middle shelves were the big tools: surgical etuis, mallets, amputation saws and knives, scoops, scalpels, scissors and probes and also smaller tools for abscess drainage, tooth extraction, musket ball extraction, arrow head extraction, blood letting, cupping and ear-candling. On the bottom shelf were materials for wound care and the treatment of fractures and dislocations such as poultices, textiles for tourniquets, styptics of chemicals such as alum and lime to treat stumps. In the drawers which formed the base of the cabinet were Dr. Grand’s oilskin journals as well as medical texts by Andreas Vesalius and others in Latin and French, jars of curious aquatic specimens belonging to the former shipboard surgeon, a Dutch doctor (the Druid was formerly The Overlijden Expedieren, one among a Dutch flotilla that had become separated, was boarded and taken as war booty) and objects that former doctor had removed or cut off from sailor’s bodies, vivisected and preserved in fluid. A nearby chest of drawers, bolted shut for purposes of confidentiality, contained the evidence of Grand’s research into Race Science: the volumes of notes toward a master thesis on Race Science he had been composing irregularly over the last forty years, some monographs related to that topic circulating Europe at the time and finally the skull measuring instruments (calipers, cephalometers, craniometers, craniophores, craniostats, and parietal goniometers) he hoped to use upon reaching their African terminus.

The size of the vessel with its elongated hull-length-to-keel-length-to-beam and lowered forecastle afforded the ship an unprecedented amount of stability on the open ocean. Likewise, Dr. Grand’s examining chamber, positioned below the waterline amidships gave his cabin the stillness, the privacy and the darkness conducive, above all, to meditation. The Judge, a metaphysical professor in his own right, preferred to meditate on his back, arms stretched wide in a Jesus Christ pose. In such a state he deciphered code from the pattern of animated shadows cast across the ceiling by the spermaceti lantern. He improvised poetry out loud. Sometimes Grand listened, always keeping the less milky of his eyes fixed on the hourglass. When it was time he sprinkled a pinch of sea salt on the leech and gently detached it from The Judge’s arm, returning it to the jar to quietly digest. Grand provided the Judge a blanket.

Rattlebox’s eyes were closed but the doctor knew he was awake. You are close to sixty years old doctor, Rattlebox said, a fine, ripe age don’t get me wrong. But there is some perplexion amongst the officers. They joke that you should have retired years ago, that you are some kind of matrimonial fugitive, escaping to Africa from your wife!

Ah. How they must envy me!

They say it in jest, doctor. Their mirth laced with concern. Here’s my point, my defense of you has grown suspicious. I tell them, ‘he simply possesses a deep love for naval medicine no matter how low-paying, thankless and dangerous it may be.’ When they argue: ‘he’s too old to be seafaring’ they say before I reply, ‘but the salt sea air keeps him youthful’ or some such banal nonsense. Those lines are steadily losing their ability to persuade. You don’t have to tell me why you’re here, but give me something to work with doctor, Rattlebox said opening his eyes and sitting up on his elbows. Help me make up a story.

You are a wise young man, Grand said, and to borrow a cliché, you are ‘wise beyond your years.’ You are one of the few men aboard who understands me.

You have my good faith, Rattlebox said.

Likewise, Grand said. You want to know how I came aboard the Druid. Well let me tell you a little something but you must swear to keep it fastened to your breast. Last July in was in Paris attending my son’s wedding to another French mistress. His third in five years!

He sounds like a devoted collector! Rattlebox said noticing, too late, the expression of seriousness on Grand’s face. He cleared his throat and said, I’m sorry. Go on.

The wedding was during the same month that Napoleon returned from his expedition in Egypt, to terrific fanfare as you can imagine, and for weeks the city was suffused with cymballed processions and traveling exhibitions showcasing the emperor’s discoveries, the things he rescued from the dusky tombs of that Ancient civilization.

The Rosetta Stone, Rattlebox said.

For example, yes, among others. There was one young scientist who had brought back Negroid skulls from several tombs. He had them mounted within a vitrine alongside the skull of a European and a Mongolian. He had outlined their respective skull volumes and measurements of their brain case by filling them with sifted white mustard seeds and then comparing the volume. I have been an amateur enthusiast of the human brain for the greater part of my life, but I had never seen illustrated so vividly the implications of comparative crania and its relationship to brainpower. Even the scientist, in whose possession these skulls belonged, hardly knew the full import of his discovery. He had his own Rosetta stone right there. It went much unnoticed relative to the more spectacular sites.

What are these “implications,” Rattlebox said yawning. For brain surgeons I presume?

Not for brain surgeons, your honor, but for students of human civilization. Grand was becoming excited and he rose from his stool. And for us as well. Just think, as we float toward the Dark Continent, how we will soon be made into maniacs, determined, as we are, to build civilized societies amidst savages. Imagine our success in this endeavor, an endeavor that, I need not add, has been the biscuit and butter as well as the scourge of our countrymen. Imagine our success if we could arrive armed with full consciousness of the real difference existing between them and us.

You are speaking too idiomatically; the full implication of this doesn’t immediately grasp me. I can’t see how differences in skull shape between the European and the African race can be extrapolated into anything more than aesthetic variation.

Grand was crestfallen. On this topic he had never before had to defend himself. Your honor, do you or do you not agree that the seat of the mind is located in the brain?

Yes, sir. I do.

And if so, do you or do you not agree that each part of the brain has its own function?

That seems to be conventional wisdom, yes.

Then does it not follow sir, that the size of the part determines the degree of the function? Since the cranium so closely encases the brain (Grand tapped his forehead) the size of the various parts can be determined by the contour of the skull. If we can prove that non-Caucasian skulls are demonstrably smaller than, say, Europeans, then the burden, nay, the necessity of civilizing becomes less repressible.

Simply too soon to say.

But does not this theory put the subjugation of non-white races into a more appropriate and justifiable context?

Subjugation, good doctor, is not our modus but rather the education of the savage. If and only if they resist, then may we good Presbyterian Christians fall upon them like so many hammers. But let me respond to your third statement with a question: given what you say, what becomes of European women? Their braincases may be as small as a Negro’s for example. What then? A scientific theory that places our wives and daughters in concert with Negroes and savages contradicts common understanding of the economy of the body and is sacrilegious to boot! Listen, I appreciate you’ve stumbled onto something, if not exactly useful, than quite interesting. I like you Grand. Write me a report. Something I can submit to my cronies in the exchequer. With some persuasion by me they may act as your benefactor and invest in your safari science. My advice in the meantime: make it publishable.

That’s extremely kind of you your honor, Grand said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the calico cloth; his entire life he struggled with the art of debate, becoming in its midst overly excited, inebriated. The fact that Rattlebox didn’t immediately take to his theories was disappointing. Accept as a token of my gratitude, Grand said trying not to betray his discomposure, if such funds do come to pass and my humble work is published and disseminated throughout Europe, the invitation to write the introduction.

Rattlebox nodded approval and reached for his coat from the hook. The doctor asked about the trial, inquiring its progress and when it might be over. It will be over, Rattlebox said with a smile, when it’s over. At that he patted the doctor on the behind and left.

The next day M. Othon was declared not guilty. Captain Wallabout read Rattlebox’s summations to the young man, without the crew’s knowledge, on the poop deck at noon. Rattlebox, the only other attendant, stood behind the captain without expression. The verdict was then read privately to the commissioned officers in Wallabout’s stateroom. Afterward they discussed how to best notify the crew: Captain Wallabout set orders for a decrease in the sailor’s rum rations followed by several days of backbreaking labor. He ordered the decks washed down, pumped dry and finished with oil. The gun ports scraped and repainted. The topmasts greased. The standing rigging tarred and reslushed. Each sailor was given a bucket of water, saltpeter ash and a torn shirt and told to scrub. Only until his men were rendered too exhausted to riot did he reveal the verdict. In one hand the captain held Rattlebox’s judgment, in the other a set of orders from the Queen titled: On the Attaining of Knowledge of Distant Parts Which Though Formerly Discovered Have Yet Been But Imperfectly Explored: Commander Wallabout. Wallabout read those orders, described their present location near Gibraltar, their projected destination in West Africa and reflected on the lessons of the trial. He finished by reciting from memory several inspirational psalms and gave the command to unfurl the topsails. The crew cried out Huzzah! And Hurrah! Grand did not attend, but his absence went unnoticed; he was in his cabin, listening to the sound of boot heels and cheers.

The premature conclusion of M. Othon’s trial and Captain Wallabout’s subsequent decision to re-set course were not in the least arbitrary; he had been closely observing a small hurricane on the horizon which had, for a week, menaced the sky to their south, a slate gray miasma never approaching, never receding. The captain was fascinated by it, standing on the weather-bow (the fore side onto which the wind was blowing) looking through his monogrammed collapsible spyglass, noting subtle shifts in texture, color and wind direction. He deciphered the signals (familiar to veteran sailor storm-watchers) in the activity of a group of porpoises that had attached themselves to the Druid. He rose in the morning eager to greet them; tossing them scraps of pemmican and regarding them as better advisors than the glorified apes in naval costume he called a staff.

His scientific patience was rewarded: Wallabout had expertly positioned the boat lee coast: land toward which the wind is driving the ship, staying at every point exactly a day ahead of the storm, profiting from its breeze while safe from its brimstone. Space was covered in days that would have taken twice as long and secret sessions were held. Wallabout gathered his closest officers to evaluate Rattlebox’s summations. They concluded that The Judge seized too much power. That he threatened the safety of the crew. Rattlebox was sentenced with “conspiring to become a cultist” and duly locked inside his windowless stateroom. His skylight covered over with a heavy plank. A cannon wheeled atop to fasten it shut. He didn’t resist.

Rattlebox’s arrest went unnoticed. Meanwhile, Wallabout invited all hands to a marksmanship competition whereby sailors could win gold coins for tagging seabirds with musket balls and exploding whales; this later contest rewarding that sailor whose calculus made their cannonball arc perfectly and land atop a waterspout. The occasional pop-then brief silence-then cheering that afternoon was audible from Grand’s cloister. Each concussion rattled the buttressed planks that formed his cabin’s ceiling, ejecting damp soot. M. Othon was visiting. He complained of nausea brought about by Wallabout’s rigorous deck-cleaning regimen. In an effort to blend in with the crew and demonstrate his commitment to their mission the youth scrubbed and mended harder than anyone else. The doctor was aware of this and examined him for sprains and dehydration but the boy seemed in fine health. When sailors visited the sickbay without sickness the doctor routinely dismissed them with one hand while scribbling “melancholia hypochondriaca” with the other. But this case was different. Grand played along, examining his patient.

It’s a chilling moment, Grand said, when you realize that what you thought was the pleasant premonition of a summer evening thunder storm is actually cannon fire.

Yes sir, M. Othon said, methinks the Druid is going a-death harvesting.

Certainly smells that way, Grand said, brushing out of his hair and off his face the soot rattled loose by the cannons. Why aren’t you above deck lad, testing your mettle. Afraid you’d be wasting powder?

Nah doctor. I’ve been prohibited from wielding a weapon ‘til we meet land. The condition of my sentence.

The doctor wiped his forehead with his calico cloth. He was struck by the ordinariness of the young man. Superficially he was indistinguishable from his peers; long sun-bleached hair pulled back into a ponytail, tawny, muscular physique, intelligent dark eyes and the wispy Van Dyke beard uniformly affected by all the boatswains.

Yes, your sentence, Grand said, you were exonerated lad! You must be pleased beyond words. You owe Rattlebox much.

Perhaps. But perhaps not. Tell me sir, what did you think of The Judge?

I greatly respected and admired him.

Funny. We both speak of him as if he’s no longer alive. But he’s alive and well inside his stateroom-coffin. Sometimes he scratches, the poor chap.

It was precisely this insolence that almost got you killed. And to speak of the man who pardoned you in such terms! Young man, you could learn a lot from Charles Rattlebox. That is a man with heart.

The young man pulled the cloth out of Grand’s breast pocket. If you took Rattlebox’s heart, he said in a calm voice while holding up the opaque kerchief in the manner of a bullfighter in front of the spermaceti lantern, if you took that man’s heart he said, and held it up to a candle, the light would shine right through.

A cannon discharged. Grand became aware that he was alone in a compressed space with an implacable young man. And as long as Wallabout’s crew was busy firing their cannons like schoolboys, he couldn’t ascend above deck for relief. Your examination is complete, now please be dismissed, Grand said. After M. Othon left Grand reflected on his motive in retaining him despite knowing that he wasn’t ill: to search his body for evidence of his guilt, reasoning that the relative firmness of his teeth in their sockets or the color of his urine might identify what legal science could not.


Grand was Rattlebox's only visitor: he appeared each morning at the plank where two boatswains, acting as guards, would push the cannon out of the way. When the plank was lifted Rattlebox's cabin was flooded with sunlight. Grand would then descend the stairs, holding onto the rail with one hand and clutching a dob kit with the other: he always came with a bar of shave soap, a cotton towelette, a basin of rainwater, a horsehair brush and a straight razor. This was Wallabout's only concession to Rattlebox who was fed barely anything, deprived of new clothes, fresh water and any literature or writing utensils, his cabin windowless and candle-less. To be daily shaved: Rattlebox took great advantage of it. I'm sorry your Honor, Grand said, continuing to refer to him as 'your honor' even though his title had been stripped away. I’m sorry, the reptile—I forgot her, again. I'm sorry. Grand was lying; he didn't forget the leech: it had been stolen by some boatswains and used in a prank (put inside a sleeper's pantaloons) that resulted in its death beneath the butt-end of a codd-neck bottle. Rattlebox put up his hand signaling the doctor that it was ok. I don't need her anymore, Rattlebox said. I can meditate without her. I can meditate on my own.

Grand visited the former judge daily, but only for brief intervals. With guards at the door they couldn’t really talk. Rattlebox, he realized, was his only confidant aboard the ship and his imprisonment put Grand into a state of befuddlement; he began misplacing medicines, papers, plaster casts, over turning inkbottles and ignoring these puddles as they crept across his writing, reclaiming ideas back to the void from which they sprang. Added to this, the announcement of imminent landfall produced frissons of anxiety down his spine. Grand found himself in the insomniac’s paradox; to be at once both sleeping, cocooned in his creaking pendulum of a hammock and, simultaneously, wide awake, pacing his cabin one foot ahead of the other, from wall to wall, twelve steps along the north/south axis, ten steps east/west. When a lone British vessel was spotted on the horizon Grand scrambled to clean up his infirmary, straightening his chamber and making the sickbay presentable for the inevitable ship visitation.

The Druid was broached by The Tenterhooks two days later and a banquet was held aboard the Druid. Rattlebox was released from his prison, shaved, showered, given a clean jacket and trousers. He was told by Wallabout not to mention the trial or risk death. During their repast Wallabout met with the Tenterhook’s skipper and was informed that the British protectorate that had been the Druid’s destination was, in the space of time since the Druid was launched, taken over by the Dutch. Its English inhabitants either killed or exiled and it was now hostile territory. Furthermore, Dutch armed privateers hired to ambush unsuspecting British vessels (heading to what they thought was their territory) had raided the Tenterhooks and would raid the Druid if they proceeded any further west. After dinner the two captains had a conference above deck. They shared cigars and admired the sunset.

The next day the Tenterhook’s surgeon, Anthony Deal, met privately with Grand. Deal had a list of medicine’s he needed; the Dutch privateers were ailing from some illness and had pilfered his medical supplies looking for the perfect cure. Deal was aware that what he spoke of resembled the febrile desperation of tuberculosis sufferers. There was tremendous sensitivity surrounding tuberculosis, also referred to as consumption. Both men were aware of its mythology, especially as seafarers; the way its presence could clean a ship of its crew in weeks (this bacteria was often the cause of that romantic notion known as ghost ships: ships without a crew floating endlessly until they either sink in open ocean or drift into the coast and run aground). Thus Deal was very careful not to use the word “consumption.” The word carried such mystical power that it could not even be spoken out loud. Deal tried to intimate casually instead: in the midst of some pleasant small talk Deal put the list of medicines he needed on the table face down and pushed it toward Grand. Grand’s smile dropped as he regarded the list before him. He felt like he had been presented with a bill after eating for hours but without any money to pay. Instead of turning it over he admitted that he didn’t have any medicine to treat that illness. That he couldn’t help. Deal rose and closed the door to Grand’s cabin. He returned to his seat and made the doctor an offer: two healthy slaves for a quarter of all his stores of medicine. Grand was stunned. This is as good an offer as one could ever receive, Deal said. Two Negroes. I’ll let ye inspect em before we shake. Come now. He called out their names; they had been outside the cabin, yards away all along. Deal stood up, eager to get this business over with but Grand grabbed his shirtsleeve, overcome with terror. I’ll give you the stores friend, he said straining for calmness, as an act of charity. Save your Negroes, he said. Save your Negroes.

After the conference Rattlebox was led at gunpoint back to his stateroom and the plank restored. Wallabout had purchased one of the two slaves Anthony Deal brought aboard; Deal, determined to sell them, set up an irresistible trade between Wallabout and the Tenterhooks’ quartermaster; one slave for 11 guns and other materiel. The slave who was purchased spoke only Dutch and possessed a difficult to pronounce Dutch name. Wallabout had the ship’s Deacon baptize the new man. The captain then named him Hosanna, after his son. Wallabout clothed Hossana in Rattlebox’s uniform.

The loss of the protectorate didn’t dampen Wallabout's spirits: his meeting with the captain of the Tenterhooks was heartening; Wallabout was encouraged to push South, past Dutch territory, to reach the next protectorate. A meeting was held, the astrolabe was consulted, maps were marked by a quill dipped in red ink. A window of two weeks was decided upon. When twelve days passed they changed direction west. By mid afternoon the next day Dutch warships appeared on the horizon bearing black flags (a warning not to approach any further). The Druid retreated to open ocean. The marksmanship competition from weeks earlier did not end but continued throughout these days, evolving from musketry and cannons to knife fighting exhibitions and hand to hand combat submission contests. M. Othon particularly distinguished himself in this last activity; he was a formidable wrestler, often finishing his takedowns by gripping his opponent's head between his forearm and bicep, pretending to twist and saying, with insouciance, "snap." It became his trademark. In the last month he had redefined himself in the eyes of the crew, from the pitiable quasi-martyr of the trial at sea to the primary representative of the grievances of the boat's underclass. M. Othon did not catalyze but rather articulated the nascent soldierly energy (craving of prostitutes, fresh red meat, blood lust, heroic opportunity, boredom, sentimentality mixed with indifference to suffering) that permeated the Druid as it skimmed along the coast of Africa searching for entry. Most remarkably, this energy, put into words by M. Othon, passed up the ranks as murmurs, eventually reaching Wallabout in the form of officer's reports. Wallabout didn’t immediately dismiss these ideas, nor was he provoked to learn that they flowed out of M. Othon; he had come to respect the young man since the trial, identifying a paternal affection for him, and admiring in him a young warrior and possible replacement for Rattlebox— a man who had been irrevocably humiliated in the eyes of the crew. Wallabout was distracted by the weather along the African coast. He was obsessed with storms, watching them for hours. When Hosannah became sick he hardly noticed.

Advance and retreat, Rattlebox said, his face covered in sweat. A blood and mucous spotted kerchief affixed to his mouth. Advance and retreat. Everyday that passes we sink more mortar shells for the sake of sport. We're leaving a trail of breadcrumbs along the ocean floor. Find my way back. Advance and retreat. Rattlebox was lying in his hammock, an oilskin journal splayed on his lap. He had been sharpening a quill with a jackknife when Grand entered with his shave equipment. It had been a little over a month since he was locked inside. With regard to Rattlebox's daily shave, Grand had become lazy, appearing at the plank later than usual or not appearing at all. Yet Grand had been visiting regularly over the last few days: he was medically intrigued by the symptoms Rattlebox was exhibiting. Grand suspected consumption but was careful not to diagnose. If word leaked out that Rattlebox had white plague, despite the fact that he was already quarantined, than the former judge would be thrown overboard without hesitation. Besides, Grand couldn't be certain.

I’m glad to see you’re writing again sir. Grand said, referring to the writing utensils-paper, quill, ink and tallow candle-that the doctor had provided a few weeks earlier to keep The Judge’s mind from disintegrating. As he filled a porcelain basin with fresh rainwater and began lathering the shave soap he asked to look at the book. It’s nothing original, Rattlebox said. It’s a sort of literary experiment: I’ve copied, verbatim, my entire King James but I started from the last word on the last page of the Bible moving toward the first page, the tension being that everyone disappears, Jesus is reduced to his infancy and disappears, The Commandments subtracted backward from ten to nine and so on, man in all of his infinite narcissism reduced from millions to Two to naught, the Universe following suit, everything becoming nothing, a point of light like a distant star gradually receding until it is no longer visible.

Grand was reluctant to use the word 'consumption' even after a second crewmember, Hossanah, was taken ill. Hossanah was assigned the degrading task of collecting and emptying out, every few days, Rattlebox's chamber pot. Grand would have been content to locate in that assignment the Rattlebox/ Hossanah viral connection except that Hossanah had consumptive-like symptoms as far back as the eve he was purchased. More likely Rattlebox caught the virus from Hossanah. Either way Grand relished this new puzzle as a distraction from the anxiety of landfall. The prospect of entering Africa held a formidable place in his unconscious; landfall would actuate his research, his life’s work, test it, force him to confront it and possibly fail by it. Would his pet myths be refuted by human experience? Grand’s musings, which had developed into neurosis, were bearable so long as they occurred deep inside his inviolable cloister, rocking back and forth in his chair amidst his monographs and textbooks and speculation. Even the presence of an African man aboard the ship was bearable as long as the two men never connected, so long as Hossanah remained an abstraction—grains of sand within a maggot-cleaned brain case. And from a distance Grand was allowed to ponder Wallabout's decision to dress Hossanah, from head to toe, in Rattlebox's epaulet studded uniform. What was Wallabout's purpose, Grand wondered. Was this for his amusement? Was the captain aware of the irony of a slave in an imperial uniform? The answers to these questions weren’t urgent because Grand believed that Hossanah would never appear before him, would never need his medical services; after all, he thought, Hossanah was an African slave and therefore possessed a sub-human, almost oxen-like tolerance for pain. A workhorse doesn’t cry when it is whipped, he said to himself.

But of course Hossanah did appear at the doctor’s cabin. Grand regarded him with caution and dubiousness, like a theatergoer exiting a playhouse suddenly coming face to face with the lead actor of the play they had just spent hours watching. When he admitted Hossanah into his cabin the first thing he did was remove Rattlebox’s former jacket. He affixed it to a hook but realized that was the hook where Rattlebox used to hang that coat. He took it down and kicked it behind his steamer trunk.

Hossanah had picked up some English, but not enough to compete with the impatience produced by his state of pain. He pointed to his head, waited a moment for Grand to nod to affirm he was following, and then made like he was straining to lift something. Grand noted “heaviness in head” into his journal. Next the man pointed to his knee caps and elbows and took Grand’s hand inside his own and pinched the back of it, causing Grand to yelp. This became “pain in joints, possibly the long bones.” After that Hossanah made a motion like he was mixing food in a bowl, adding ingredients. He handed the invisible bowl to Grand who took it, filled the spoon up with food and sampled it, smiling. He offered it back to Hossanah but he refused. “Want of appetite, possibly pain in stomach,” Grand wrote. He led the man to a bed.

Most likely, he has ‘the illness’, Grand said to Rattlebox. Rattlebox’s condition had deteriorated; the odor of rotting flesh had settled like mildew between the cracks of his stateroom and the doctor could only stand it by holding a camphorated handkerchief to his face. Rattlebox could no longer grasp a pen to write and could do little else except hold himself in a fetal position between coughing fits. What stage is his infection? Rattlebox asked. Less advanced than yours, Grand said. Which is strange, Rattlebox said, would have suspected his immune system to be weaker than my own. Rattlebox coughed into a handkerchief as a muffler; he didn’t want to draw attention. I’ve brought you this. Grand presented to Rattlebox his former coat. Rattlebox took it. That’s curious, Rattlebox said, I don’t remember having this in my pocket. He pulled a folded piece of paper out of the inside breast pocket. Unfolding it revealed the words: TIME OF SAILING KEEP ME FLOATING. Rattlebox coughed into the paper and crumpled it up.

In the middle of the night M. Othon banged on Grand’s door demanding to see what Hossanah was doing. He had been sent by Wallabout to check on his slave, impatient; it had been several days and Hossanah wasn’t yet restored. Grand begged for more time from M. Othon. The young man didn’t respond he just pushed the cabin door open, knocking Grand to the ground and out of the way—but didn’t enter. He turned and left; a message that he wouldn’t be so kind upon his next visit. Grand’s back was in terrible pain, he couldn’t immediately stand, so he crawled on hands and knees toward where Hossanah lay curled up in a fetal position. The man was covered in sweat, lying atop the sheets of his berth for a relief not forthcoming. From his vantage on his hands and knees Grand came eyelevel with Hossanah’s feet. By candlelight he could see that Hossanah had made an attempt to relieve himself but missed the chamber pot. Steadying himself, rising slowly, Grand was able to bring down from a shelf a basin into which he emptied a carafe of rainwater and began mixing in soap and pumice. He lathered the man’s feet with his cloth, grinding off the dried excrement, rinsing the cloth with fresh water and applying that, gently, between his toes, the ball’s of his feet, his heels, the arch, working the back of his feet, upward to his calf and lower leg. Grand then dried his feet, raising and lowering them near the candle to check for overlooked spots. He dumped the basin into a drain and refilled it with more fresh water. He applied a cool compress to Hossanah’s forehead, lifting the cloth and twisting it in his hands, ringing it out with the hope that these droplets might be soothing. With the cool, moist cloth covering his hand he massaged Hossanah’s shaved scalp, feeling the hills of his skull beneath his fingers. Hossanah was asleep throughout but began to cough violently, waking himself up. The water that streamed from Grand’s cloth entered his nostrils and made him feel like he was drowning.